Robin van Rijthoven

71 Response to phonics through spelling intervention 3 of a phonological deficit in children with dyslexia (Shaywitz et al., 2003; Snowling, 1998). It can tentatively be concluded that the phonics through spelling intervention helped children with dyslexia to overcome their reading and spelling problems up to the level of their genetically disposed phonological deficit. Some limitations should be acknowledged at this point along with directions for future research. To begin with, although the positive effects of the phonics through spelling interventionarebasedonstandardizednorms (i.e., comparisonswithtypicallydeveloping peers), the results should be interpreted carefully as we did not include control groups in our study. Our study shows on average promising results for children with dyslexia after a phonics through spelling intervention. More research is necessary to find out whether these are due to the addition of spelling to the intervention. Despite these promising results, the majority of the children remain in the lowest 10%, particularly for pseudoword and word reading. More research is needed to find out what causes the differences in growth during the intervention. Future studies should consider larger samples sizes and control conditions that focus on reading solely and spelling solely. For studies combining reading and spelling in a phonics through spelling intervention, it is important to report the amount of time spent on reading or spelling separately and variations in spelling approaches that mirror phonics approaches (e.g., analytical versus synthetic approaches). To conclude, the present findings show that phonics through spelling interventions help children with dyslexia to improve their pseudoword reading, word reading, and spelling levels. On average, the intervention is effective, notwithstanding children’s individual cognitive profiles. Perceptual cognitive skills and pretest scores predicted the change in word spelling during the intervention. Although promising results were found, this study also showed the persistence of spelling, but even more so of reading problems after an intervention among children with dyslexia.

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